Presenting documents and other displayable content to an audience in a compelling way has become an important part of public speaking. Software like Microsoft PowerPoint is now often an essential part of addressing groups of people in business or official contexts. An advantage of PowerPoint is that a presenter can advance the slideshow simply, even remotely, without detracting from the presentation by having to concentrate on operating a computer. PowerPoint is limited, however, in its relative inability to modify the way content is displayed during a presentation.
For presentations where more flexibility is needed, such as courtroom trials, specialized software like inData's Trial Director is available. This software allows manipulation or annotation of the displayed content in real time during the presentation. For example, an operator can pull up a different document, move to an arbitrary page of a document, move a document around on the screen, zoom in or out of a section of a document, callout a portion, highlight a portion, circle a portion, and the like, all in real time.
The drawback of software like Trial Director is that it is not necessarily conducive to operation by the speaker or presenter. Usually, presenters, such as questioning attorneys, require another person sitting behind the scenes to operate the software in response to verbal cues. While it is possible for the presenter to use the software on a laptop at a podium, such software is designed for use with a mouse and keyboard, which can be awkward and distracting to try to use during a live presentation, and usually makes inefficient use of screen real estate on the assumption that a live operator is set up behind a desk with a generously sized computer screen. Another disadvantage to some prior art is that content intended only for the operator, such as a file picker, remain visible to the audience, detracting from a seamless and professional-appearing presentation.
Recently, software has become available to try to provide some of the functionality of applications like Trial Director on a tablet PC, intended to be used by the presenter rather than with the assistance of a separate operator. These programs include LitSoftware's TrialPad and inData's TDMobile, both of which operate on the Apple iPad. These applications allow manipulation of the displayable content in response to multitouch gestures by the operator; for example, “pinch to zoom.” Moreover, they generally hide operator-specific content, such as file pickers, from the audience, displaying such content only on the operator's tablet. However, these applications can still be difficult or awkward for a presenter to navigate in real time on a small tablet-sized screen, principally because the operator-specific content either blocks the displayable content from the presenter and prevents the latter's manipulation, or forces the displayable content area of the operator's display to shrink to accommodate the new elements, wasting valuable screen real estate. Any additional content the operator may wish to have visible on the display, such as notes about the displayed document, would take up even more screen space, as can be seen in Microsoft PowerPoint's “Presenter View.”